Synod Ecumenical Officer John Durell introduces an exciting new project in the life of the Churches of the Region - where, again, perhaps the North East is showing the way!
Key idea: that the primary ecumenical responsibility is to ask not "What do the other traditions first need to learn from us?" but "What do we need to learn from them?"
Key need: to develop this thinking in practice on the ground in all expressions of Church life.The basic plan: an examination of our various Church practices in relation to ordained ministry, lay formation, modes of decision making and finance.
Who? Key players in Church life, specialists in theology and religion, management and finance, and most importantly YOU.
What is being asked of you? Prayers; suggestions for case-studies, key issues and people; raising awareness; and thinking about how you might help.
Dr Paul Murray of the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University has spent a good deal of time with leaders of the various Churches in the region, and with the members of the Executive Committee of NECCT, persuading as many people as possible to be involved in this exciting Project, which was launched at a special NECCT Gathering at Brancepeth on November 24th.
Within our Synod our Ecumenical Committee has show enthusiasm for it, and our Finance & Property Committee has agreed to a measure of underwriting. Our moderator has given her personal support, and a number of ministers are already involved in the main areas of research described below.
The aim is to conduct a grant-funded, three-year collaborative research project, with full stakeholder participation and ownership, that will decisively and very practically take forwards the innovative thinking at work in the widely acclaimed January 2006 Catholic Learning and Receptive Ecumenism Research Colloquium which took place at Ushaw College by examining its implications at the level of the local church.
This will involve a comparative study of the workings of Churches in our region along the following five key trajectories of investigation: governance; finance (including generation, demand and administration); management of the effects of declining numbers of clergy; lay participation in discernment and decision making; and lay training. The intention is both to identify and describe the particular cultures and practices of each denominational situation in these regards and, in the light of this, to explore in a constructive, supportive and appropriately respectful manner the ways in which each tradition may have useful things to learn from the other traditions regarding potential ways ahead with perceived difficulties.
It is envisaged that there will be five overlapping collaborative research groupings corresponding to the key trajectories. It is hoped that each group will be composed of an appropriate mix of theologians and sociologists/anthropologists of religion (from the University’s Department of Theology & Religion and the local theological colleges), academics in the fields of finance, management, and organisational studies (from the University’s Business School), and key local church employees and administrators (e.g. local ecumenical officers and theological educators).
The Project should test and extend the thinking behind Receptive Ecumenism in very practical ways that could act as a model of good practice throughout the UK and beyond. Behind this imagining is the clear recognition that the Church is not simply an idea but a life-world and that ecumenism is, therefore, a profoundly practical as well as theoretical activity.